"which" = whose

Jonathan Lighter wuxxmupp2000 at YAHOO.COM
Sat Jun 28 15:17:30 UTC 2008


About 25 year ago I became alarmed by the tendency of some freshmen to avoid "whose" with a nonhuman, nonanimal antecedent (not that any of them used complex very often).
 
Instead of "whose" (or "who's," as it was usually spelled when used), the unpracticed writers produced "that's," "which's" and "which."  Here is an ex. of the latter, from an otherwise well educated Amazon.com customer. This is the first I've seen in generally fluent prose:
 
2000 [http://www.amazon.com/review/product/0679730826/ref=cm_cr_pr_hist_2?%5Fencoding=UTF8&filterBy=addTwoStar] : The atomic bomb was NOT designed to end wars without commitment of manpower on the battlefield as the author contends. The A-bomb was another weapon, which potentiality we only discovered after its use. 
 
Oops!  I just remembered! Some graduate students were doing it too!  
 
JL




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